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Democracy and Power 101: Government is Power
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. —James Madison, Speech in the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830

President Obama recently weighed in on the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) net neutrality proceedings, basically endorsing a government takeover of the internet. Given the president's predilections for executive orders, the decision is not surprising. Imposing sweeping new regulations on the internet would continue the expansion of the administrative state that the president favors. But new regulations come at the price of reduced innovation and lower levels of capital investment, which is unfortunate, because neither the administration nor the FCC have yet to make the case that current internet policies have been problematic.

There is a great deal of discussion today about empowering the FCC to regulate internet services providers as if they were public utilities. Supporters of Net Neutrality tend to think this is a good idea, because they fear that ISPs will give discriminatory access to bandwidth, creating a so-called “internet fast lane” for companies with enough capital to pay.

In response to a recent legal decision in Europe, Google has released a new form for its European users that will allow them to request that links to certain articles about them be removed from the search engine. While European privacy advocates who have been pushing for a "right to be forgotten" may applaud this effort, the impact on the flow of information across the Internet is substantial. As Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School puts it, "The most important harm of this decision is not to the search engine companies, but to the public at large, and its ability to find accurate public information." Rather than an open and public exchange of information, Europe's new law injects an online censor to govern the accessibility of freely available public information.

Democracy and Power 112: Fidelity to LeadershipTo be elected, a politician must please his constituents. However, to be a powerful legislative force, a politician must be an obedient member of a party – Democrat or Republican. Since most constituents are busy making a living, raising families and focused on immediate community concerns, loyalty to the party most often prevails

The Marketplace Fairness Act would subject retailers to sales tax audits from 50 different states and tax laws of nearly 10,000 local tax authorities. Proponents of this bill claim that this levels the playing field between internet merchants, such as Ebay or Amazon with brick and mortar retailers like Walmart or Best Buy. Critics point out that it only boosts the tax bill for America’s consumers and allows state governments to tax businesses not within their jurisdiction.

Twitter's impact on traditional media has raised the benchmark for breaking news and its existence has blurred the perception of media credibility vs. reliability. Breaking news is often reported to Twitter first then re-tweeted and immediately broadcasted to the traditional media and other various internet sources. This puts a twist on the way Americans view news outlets.